Stansfield would find out later. For now they had to figure out what had happened in Paris, and to what extent they might be exposed. Keeping his eyes on Hurley, he asked, “Any word on what happened last night?”
“Nine bodies. Libyan oil minister and a prostitute were gunned down along with his four-person security detail.”
The deputy director of Operations gave a slight nod. He’d already confirmed as much.
“There were also three innocent civilians.” Hurley leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stroked his mustache with both hands and folded them under his chin. The man seemed to be in perpetual motion. Even at fifty-three, he had a youthful energy about him.
“Three innocents?” Stansfield asked, betraying his surprise with only an arched brow. He turned to Kennedy. “Did you know about this?”
“No,” Kennedy answered honestly.
“Two hotel guests,” Hurley added, “just down the hall from Tarek’s room, and then a kitchen boy in the back alley.”
“Nine bodies,” Stansfield repeated, still surprised by the number.
“That’s right,” Hurley said as if it was no big deal.
“Any chance one of these bodies is the man we’re looking for?” Stansfield asked.
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
Kennedy turned in her chair to face Hurley. “Where’d you get this information?”
“Listen here, Missy,” Hurley snarled, “I wasn’t the one who planned this half-assed op.”
“Let’s hear it,” Kennedy said with a confrontational edge in her voice.
“Hear what?”
“How the great Stan Hurley would have done it differently.”
“For starters I would have never sent him in alone.”
“That’s pretty much all we’ve done for the last nine months and he’s been pretty successful . . . a hell of a lot more successful than you and your boys have been the last couple years.”
“You can bitch all you want, but I warned you. You gave that boy way too long a leash.”
Stansfield was not in the mood to referee another argument between these two, so he cleared his throat and asked, “Who’s your source?”
“Don’t worry about my source. He’s impeccable.”
“All the same,” Stansfield said, “I’d like to know.”
Hurley put on an irritated face. He’d known Stansfield for three decades and he knew by the arch of his damn right eyebrow when there was no sense in trying to put him off. “An editor at one of the major dailies over there. She says the press is all over this thing.”
Kennedy noted that he’d originally referred to his source as a he. The man was always thinking of ways to throw you off.
“Is this the she I’m thinking of?” Stansfield asked.
Hurley knew how proper his old friend was, and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say openly what he was really asking. “You mean the editor from
Stansfield nodded.
“That would be her.”
“And how do we know that she has her facts straight? We can assume they have it right on Tarek and the prostitute. What about the other seven bodies?”
“She already has names on all of them. The police have asked her not to release them until they can notify families, but none of the names I was given popped.”
“So we can assume he’s alive,” Kennedy said, with just a hint of relief in her voice.
“And that he fucked up, big-time!” Hurley said, not giving her an inch.
“We don’t know that,” Kennedy retorted, addressing Stansfield instead of Hurley. She had known both of these men since birth. Her father had worked with them out of this very building. She was perhaps the only person at Langley under the age of thirty who would dare disagree with them. Stansfield admired her for it, while Hurley thought she should keep her mouth shut until she’d served at least a decade.
“What we know,” Hurley said, his voice growing in intensity, “is that innocents are off limits. That is the unbreakable rule.”
“That means a lot coming from you,” Kennedy said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Uncle Stan,” she said in a voice devoid of affection, “you’ve based your entire career on breaking the rules, and I think the reason he pisses you off is that he’s a constant reminder that you are getting old and he’s better than you were at your best.”
Stansfield knew the words hurt his old friend, and he also knew there was a great deal of truth to them. Most
